Goodbye, Orkney Islands! Now, where's my wallet?

Trip Date: 05 June 2012

Today was bittersweet. I was ready to get back to my friends in Glasgow, but I was not ready to leave Orkney. One of the men who shared my room at the Kirkwall Peedie Hostel was a former(/current) reporter for the BBC who had never been and was staying for two weeks! I was very jealous of him.

Well, my bus was supposed to leave at 9am to go back to the South Ronaldsay dock to go back to John O'Groats and then on to Inverness, so I had to get up pretty early. I did one last walkthrough of Kirkwall's City Center and picked up a few snacks from the grocery store for my ride home (Haribo and peanuts) and got on the bus. It was only then that I realized I didn't have my wallet. Immediately stressed, I asked the bus driver how much time I had: 3-4 minutes. I threw my bag out onto the pavement and emptied its contents but couldn't find it. I knew it wasn't at the hostel because I checked everything before I left, and I knew, for once, that I hadn't been pick-pocketed (it's Orkney!), but I couldn't find it. Not wanting to leave the bus, I tried thinking what I had done with it the night before because I knew I must have put it somewhere that I couldn't forget it. Not in my pocket, not in my coat, not in my bag....oh, that's right...I put it in the toe of my hiking boots which were strung onto my backpack. I'm an idiot. So I repacked my bag, with my wallet safely back in my pants pocket, and got back onto the bus where I was met with a round of applause, hahaha!

The bus drove back over the Churchill Barriers where I got some nice parting shots of the blockships at a lower tide with perfectly calm waters. And then, once more, we waited a few moments at the ferry dock and I climbed a peedie bluff and watched the ferry captain navigate the waters and rocky reefs with an outgoing tide like a pro! It was a little bit more gray of a day, but I stood out on top of the ferry the whole ride back to take in all the beautiful scenery of Scapa Flow and the Pentland Firth one last time before I was sitting back down in my seat on a bus.

Blockships at low-tide and still water

Swift out-going tide creating whitewater on shallow rocky reefs

Little purple flowers on the bluffs at the Burwick ferry dock on South Ronaldsay

Awesome folded bedding planes along the coast on South Ronaldsay

You can see just how shallow the water can be during low-tide in the Pentwater Firth. This is why ship captains have to be so careful when navigating the waters!

Back in Inverness, it was suggested I get lunch at a little American restaurant just around the corner from the train station. It was good, I'll have to say, but I realized as soon as I sat down that I'd left my coat (with my camera lens in the pocket) in the overhead bin on the bus! I asked my server if he'd watch my stuff while I ran back to the bus station. But the bus was no longer there! It quickly dawned on me that it wasn't quite 1:45pm yet and that the bus would have to be back to start it's trip back to John O'Groats at 2:20, so I called the company on my way back to the restaurant to tell them I'd be looking for my coat, and sat down to enjoy my delicious cheeseburger! At 2:10 I was back at the bus station where I luckily was able to retrieve my coat, with camera lens still there, and sat down in the travel center until my bus for Glasgow came around, not wanting to go anywhere in case I forget yet another item somewhere...

But soon enough I was home, walking into my flat in Glasgow. It had been a fantastic 4-day trip to one of the most beautiful and historic places I'd ever been to! Looking back through the photos and writing these blog posts has just reminded me so much why I love to travel. It makes you realize who you are as a person and how you fit in to this tiny little rotating ball in the sky we call home.